Bias in science academia is a big topic, but it's selective. If there are fewer women, it is regarded as a hostile environment but if there are no Republicans that is their choice.

Penn State researchers have added something new into the mix - hormones. If you are a woman who wanted to be a physicist, you may have been fighting your own sex hormones to do it, they say. They did it by looking at people's interest in occupations that exhibit sex differences in the general population and are relevant to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers.

"Our results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with things versus people," said Adriene M. Beltz, graduate student in psychology, working with Sheri A. Berenbaum, professor of psychology and pediatrics, Penn State. "We found there is a biological influence on that interest toward things, so maybe women aren’t going into STEM careers because what they're interested in -- people -- isn't consistent with an interest in STEM careers. Maybe we could show females ways in which an interest in people is compatible with STEM careers."

The researchers studied teenagers and young adults with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) - a genetic condition where babies were exposed to more androgen, a type of male sex hormone, than is normal while in the uterus - and their siblings who do not have CAH. Females with CAH are genetically female and are treated as females, but their interests tend to be more similar to stereotypically male ones.

The researchers reported in Hormones and Behavior that females with CAH were significantly more interested than females without CAH in careers related to things compared to careers related to people. The researchers also found that career interests directly corresponded to the amount of androgen exposure the females with CAH experienced -- those exposed to the most androgen in the uterus showed the most interest in things versus people.

Females without CAH had less interest than males in occupations related to things, such as engineer or surgeon, and more interest in careers focused on interacting with people, such as social worker or teacher. There was no significant difference reported between males with CAH and males without the condition.

"We took advantage of a natural experiment," said Berenbaum. "We're suggesting that these interests are pretty early developing."

The researchers asked the participants to rate each item in a list of 64 occupations, according to whether they would like, dislike or were indifferent to doing that job. The occupations were grouped into six categories of careers -- realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. This list and the categories are based on a well-established and validated system often used by vocational counselors.

The realistic and investigative categories reflect thing-oriented careers like farmer and scientist, social and artistic categories reflect people-oriented jobs such as teacher and artist, and the enterprising category was in the middle with occupations like realtor and hotel manager.

Comments

Comments

Interesting study. Unlike a lot of women in a STEM field (computer science, in my case), I don't have a problem with the idea that there are biologically based differences between men and women.

I do think it's important to call out something this article lightly pointed out: this study looked at preferences based on external impressions of careers. As people in every field know, what it is like on the inside is very different than the stereotypes. As a programmer that much of what I do is relating to people (figuring out requirements, interviewing, team dynamics), and my mother-in-law, a teacher, spends much of her time in solitary activities such as getting technology to work and researching lesson plans.

Without question the research has holes. Anyone getting into a biological explanation for a type of job has a 68% confidence interval if they are lucky. It's more than inclination to do a job, it also takes some talent, desire and being better than other people at it. As you noted, there are as many exceptions as rules, making it likely the rules aren't really rules.